


A Great Divide

by outlaw_queened



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, post 3b
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-16
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outlaw_queened/pseuds/outlaw_queened
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The door clicks closed downstairs and she forces her breath into something more regular. <i>In-out-in-out-in-out.</i> She could be helpless now, could sit by and wait for others to make decisions about her life. But she’s long ago determined that her life would be her own. Not Snow White’s. Not the king’s or Emma Swan’s or her mother’s. And not Robin Hood’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Great Divide

“She’s not here right now,” Henry is saying stubbornly from downstairs. “I’ll let her know you came by.” 

 

She listens for Emma’s wheedling protest, for the justifications and the begging to _let me in, let me talk to Regina and I’ll make this right_ \- like she’s done twice a day for the past two days since that night in the diner- but instead it’s a low, accented voice that retorts, “And how much longer does your mother plan on avoiding me?”

 

She freezes where she’s sitting on her bed and waits, chills of _a second chance_ and _you were my soulmate_ and _we could have been–_

 

“I think you should give her some space,” Henry responds, and then his voice lowers and she can’t hear what he’s saying or what Robin’s saying and she clutches her pillow against her and shakes.

 

She feels…bare. Exposed, in ways she never has before. Like she’d taken a wild chance and just kept going, kept opening up and revealing herself and trying to build something good for the second time in decades. And now the one good thing she’d managed to cling to is speaking to the one she’s already lost and there’s nothing left for her to do.

 

The door clicks closed downstairs and she forces her breath into something more regular. _In-out-in-out-in-out._ She could be helpless now, could sit by and wait for others to make decisions about her life. But she’s long ago determined that her life would be her own. Not Snow White’s. Not the king’s or Emma Swan’s or her mother’s. And not Robin Hood’s.

 

She straightens and reminds herself that he has no power over her. He’s a good man and he respects her secrets, would keep the parts of her heart she’d shown him safe as she’d trusted him before. Regardless of who his wife is. Regardless of what his wife has seen of her and what she believes about her. Robin has _known_ her, even if only for a brief time.

 

She hears a thump near her window and whirls around, flames already gathering in her hand, and Robin rears back from where he’s attempting to climb into her room at the sight of the flames and topples off the side roof. “Robin!” Already her magic is flying out to catch him, and she hurries to the window. “What the hell are you doing?” 

 

He’s hanging from the roof one-handed like the ridiculous thief he is, suspended in midair by her magic and his steady grip, and he still manages to offer her a smirk. “Talking to you?” he suggests, pushing off the ledge to flip himself back up onto the roof.

 

“You could have gotten yourself killed. Or turned to ash.” Her heart is pounding and she takes a step back, forgetting to object when he slides in through the window and leans against it. “Don’t you know better than to try and break into a witch’s house?”

 

“Ah, but you’re so much more than that, Regina,” he smiles easily, and it’s _frustrating_ , the way he’s acting as though nothing has changed, as though this is days ago and they’re still kissing by fireside, the former loves of their lives safely gone and ready to move on. As though he can still talk to her and her heart can still react to his presence in ways it hasn’t around anyone since Daniel.

 

She clears her throat and narrows her eyes and watches as the smile fades from his eyes. “Say what you have to say, thief.”

 

“Robin,” he corrects her. “I won’t sweep aside what we had like a shameful secret.”

 

“Isn’t it?” she counters. “You have your wife back now. You have your _family_ back. She doesn’t want to hear about what you’ve been up to with the Evil Queen.” And Regina won’t put herself out there again, won’t let her defenses fall in front of this man again. She’s come too far to let him get in her way of peace at last. 

 

“No,” he agrees, and her heart sinks anyway. “She’s been…she’s been through an experience. I don’t understand it myself. I’d never thought that you’d been involved with…I can’t imagine we ever would have…” He shakes his head. “The workings of time travel are a bit of a mystery to me, but the way Emma Swan tells it, nothing has changed since before she tampered with the past. Except this.”

 

“Except this,” Regina echoes, and folds her arms together in front of her stomach. “And now your life is complete again. Congratulations.” Her tone is dry, not too bitter. Not when she understands where he’s coming from. 

 

She doesn’t know how she’d react to the same. Daniel had meant the world to her, but she’s so far from who she’d been when she’d loved him. She wonders if he could have even loved her now, her gentle stable boy confronted with someone dark and complicated and unfinished. Robin is…different, coy and sly and unafraid, steady even in the face of the angry, lonely woman he’d met the last year. She doesn’t know if she’d be quite so suited to Daniel anymore, though the words are sacrilege to contemplate. 

 

His eyes are warm, wistful, and she remembers a gentle hand to her cheek, brushing her hair aside. “It wasn’t incomplete before. We had…we were going to build something together, weren’t we?”

 

And she softens against her better judgment, because he doesn’t look like someone who’s about to offer her empty apologies or even start blathering on about choices and missed chances. He isn’t here to give her reasons that she already knows, and he isn’t here to assuage his own guilt. He’s offering her understanding, trust that she’d given him, and she’s clothed again with the quiet recognition of what they’d had. “We were,” she agrees, and she doesn’t quite smile but she doesn’t feel like she needs to glare at him either.

 

“Mom?” She turns. Henry is standing in the doorway, straightened to his not-quite-intimidating height and wearing a protective scowl. “Want me to get rid of this guy?” His voice squeaks a little, not quite a boy and not quite a man but still ready to defend the mother who’s brought thousands to their knees, and she stretches out her arm so he can come over and fit underneath it.

 

“I think I’m going to be all right,” she murmurs, pulling him closer, and she doesn’t quite mean it but it’s close. For a little while, it’s close. 

 

Robin’s eyes are soft as he watches them, and she thinks back to when Henry had been with them the first time after his memories had returned, and he’d said  _You’re even more beautiful when you’re in love_ and oh, they could have been a family. But that isn’t an option anymore. “You should go,” she says to him, and she knows her own eyes are just as soft. “You need to be with your family.”

 

There’s a flicker of longing on his face- a face she can read so easily so quickly, and is this what being a soulmate means? That they’re always going to _see._ Even when it hurts. Even when there are others- and he nods, a hair too slowly. “I suppose I do,” he murmurs.

 

He doesn’t ask to use the front door, just hops out the window again like a reckless teenager, and it’s the motion of it- this _fool_ , frustrating and heartbreaking and wonderful- that has her face fall again as she trembles in Henry’s arms.


End file.
